


A Decrease in Temperature

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Comfort, Cooking Lessons, Gen, Human Gabriel, Sick Gabriel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3896362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel just doesn't know how to be human. Fortunately, he knows a few people who do.</p><p>[Tumblr anon prompt fill]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Decrease in Temperature

Sam could practically hear Castiel rolling his eyes. The pure distaste in his expression made him want to laugh, but he refrained. Decades of pretending he didn’t find Dean funny had taught him to keep a straight face when necessary. “Cas, he’s still learning.”

“Because he refused to listen when I tried to help him.”

Dean clapped Gabriel on the back of the head. Sam’s smirk was unstoppable this time. He knew Dean had wanted to do that for years. “Moron.”

Gabriel’s whiskey eyes flashed in annoyance, but not with holy grace. “Don’t you ever-"

“Gabe,” Sam said quietly, “do you think maybe you should listen when Cas tries to explain what’s different about being a human?” He felt like he was talking to a toddler, not an omnipotent archangel.

Amazingly, Sam was the only one Gabriel seemed inclined to listen to about anything. Considering their history, it was hard to understand, except that Sam was the only one still trying to be patient with him. “Fine. Little brother, educate me. I’m a blank slate for you to write upon.” He held his hands out in faux invitation.

The blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I doubt that,” he muttered. But he gave a long-suffering sigh and gestured toward the chair. Gabriel raised his eyebrows, as if he didn’t understand. Castiel glowered at him. “Don’t be obtuse. Sit.”

“You know,” Gabriel began.

“If you say something about how many creative ways you could smite us if you had your power one more time, I’ll break your face,” Dean promised.

Gabriel’s eyes flicked to the older Winchester, and he smirked. “You don’t even know how many creative ways I’ve already broken your face, Deano. Have Sam tell you one day. It’ll be fun.”

Sam’s calm was about to boil over. “Gabriel, we’re trying to help you because your level of douche is not so high as most of your brethren. But remind me of that Tuesday again, and Dean will have to stand in line to break you.”

The pouting began, and Castiel turned in one dramatic motion. “I can’t,” he announced, and stalked into the bunker library alone.

Dean threw his hands in the air and went after him with a glance at Sam.

“Well, that’s great. You’ve managed to piss off the only other angel who could possibly understand what you’re going through, and the only Winchester who didn’t have a compulsion to kill you just because you exist.”

Gabriel seemed to consider these words. Then he shook his head. “No, I think Dean does want to kill me because I exist.”

“So why don’t you listen to Castiel when he tries to help you?”

He shrugged. “He enjoys it too much.”

Sam blinked at him. “What?”

For the first time since he admitted to being an angel, Sam suspected Gabriel might actually be telling the truth. “Can you think of how embarrassing this is? How humiliating? Cassie is the last angel I want to see me like this. And Dean. Now that I’ve felt pain, real, human pain, I…” 

Realization dawned on Sam, and he could feel it spread across his face. “Oh my god, you feel guilty.”

“Not just that. Castiel did this better than me.”

“What?” He was practically shrieking now.

Gabriel’s teeth unclenched. “It’s humiliating to know that Castiel handled this just fine, and I’m obviously not.”

Sam stared down at him. Several beats of silence went by before his lips began quirking into a smile, and another three before he burst into laughter.

The former archangel glowered up at him miserably. “Sure. Laugh it up. Go on. After what I did to you and your brother, it’s deserved. I did save your asses from a bunch of angry gods, but no, go ahead. Laugh it up.”

Sam shocked himself by reaching out for Gabriel’s arm and pulling them both into the chairs. “No. No, Gabe. You think Cas handled this just fine? Seriously? He was a complete wreck!”

The expressive eyebrows perked back up. “He was?”

“Dude, yes. Why do you think he’s trying so hard to help you? Nobody…” Sam sighed. “It’s a long story, but nobody helped him when it happened to him. He did it on his own because he had to, not because he chose to. And, yeah, he did a great job of it. Cas is strong in ways I don’t think any other angel gives him credit for. But that doesn't mean he wasn’t a mess.”

“I guess you think I’m a horrible person for being glad to hear that.” Gabriel sniffed.

Sam shook his head. “No. I thought you were a horrible person before. And now you’re a horrible human. And if you’d like to remain a living horrible human, you need to suck it up and ask for help. Dean and I are ready to let you get yourself killed, a bit of poetic justice in a Trickster’s paradise as far as we’re concerned. But Castiel has asked us to help you, and we’re going to do that. For him. Because he’s our friend, and for whatever reason, he thinks you’re worth saving.”

Gabriel sighed, and nodded quietly.

***

It was while he was learning to prepare potatoes, because Dean said they were the most important staple, that Gabriel felt a tingling feeling behind his eyes. He blinked hard, and flared his nostrils, stretched his neck to the side, stepped backward, and took a deep breath. Then he exploded.

Gabriel had been stabbed in the back with an angel blade, had felt his grace spill out to the cosmos, then felt it all crash back down on him again as Death changed His mind. But this was the weirdest feeling he had ever had.

“Gesundheit.”

His eyes were watering, but he could make out Dean calmly chopping the peeled potatoes. How could the man still be calmly chopping peeled potatoes when an angel had just exploded next to him?

“Glad you backed up before you got snot all over my food.”

Perhaps this was a trick of some sort. Gabriel always suspected that everything could be a trick. He looked down to find all his humany parts still attached. His throat tickled a bit, but his head seemed intact as well.

“Dude, you gonna stand there all day? Cas wanted you to be able to create food with your bare hands instead of out of thin air. I’m not giving culinary classes here. You want to learn, you gotta help.”

“Yes,” he said, trying out his voice. “Of course. I’m helping.” His nose twitched, and he rubbed it with the back of his wrist. But he continued to stand.

Dean rolled his eyes. “You got a problem?” 

“Did you say gesundheit?”

“I don’t know. Probably. What, you prefer bless you? Want me to sing Jesus Loves Me with you tonight before bed too?”

Gabriel looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I said gesundheit. What?”

“Because I sneezed. Because that’s what you say when someone sneezes.”

Dean turned to stare at him. “Have you been smoking?”

“Would that cause me to sneeze?”

The green eyes narrowed. “Gabe, you okay, man?”

It was the first time this particular human had shown any actual concern for his well-being, which he supposed should make him pleased, but really just worried him more. “I…don’t know.”

Dean lay down the knife and approached him slowly. “What’s going on with you?”

“I sneezed. What does that mean?”

The man took a breath, relaxing his shoulders. Gabriel did not see that there was any reason to relax just yet. “Oh. Right. Um, okay, so that can mean a couple things. I never sneeze. Like never. Except that I’m allergic to cats. So that’s one thing. You could be allergic to something. Cas had a bad reaction to a pomegranate or something once.”

“That’s because it’s the fruit of Hades.” Gabriel waved that away. “He should have known better. Go on, what else?”

Dean watched him, then shrugged. “Okay. If it’s not that, it’s just your body trying to clear things out of your head and lungs.”

“Pollutants.”

“Could be. Or you’ve got a cold.”

This struck Gabriel as ridiculous. “I sneeze because I’m cold? That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever-“

“No, not because you are cold. Because you’ve got a cold. Gabe, how many centuries did you hang out on Earth? Millenia? Didn’t Mary or Muhammad ever get a cold while you were talking to them?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Cold is a sensation related to a temperature decrease, Dean. I know what cold is. I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re a little bit of an idiot,” Dean argued. “Go tell Doctor Cas you’ve got yourself a cold. Let him explain it to you.”

Castiel seemed annoyed with Gabriel for having caught this decrease in temperature at all. “You’re sick?” he demanded irritably.

“Of course not!” He was practically whining now, but his indignant look was his default expression now, so it covered the confusion and frustration. “I said I’ve got cold.”

“A cold, Gabriel. You’ve got a cold.”

“Why do you people insist on putting an article before that word?”

“Because that’s the correct way to express what is wrong with you. A creation of the Horseman Pestilence has invaded your body. It’s uncomfortable, but your immune system will destroy it within a few days.”

Horror passed over Gabriel’s face, even as he felt the tingling beginning again. “Days!” he cried. “A thing made by Pestilence is going to attack me for days? I want it destroyed now!”

There was no sympathy in Castiel’s eyes. “Gabriel, surely you have met humans who were sick.”

“Yes, plagues and such! Little bro, you gotta heal me!”

A dark brow climbed toward Castiel’s hairline. “Heal you? You aren’t hurt. You certainly are not dying. If I do not allow your immune system to learn about its enemies, it will continue to fall to them. The best thing for you is to handle this like a human would.”

“Which is how?” he demanded. “I’ve seen people on television dying because they were cold! Is that what’s going to happen to me?”

“It isn’t hypothermia, Gabriel! You’re an angel of the Lord. Act like it.”

Gabriel closed his eyes in desperation. “Father, why have you forsaken us?” he wailed.

Castiel pinched at his nose as if he were the one getting a headache.

And now that he thought of it, Gabriel’s head _was_ beginning to ache. But that thought flew away when he exploded again, all over his brother.

***

It was difficult to be around Gabriel all the time and not grow at least a little fond of him, even as he managed to grate on nerves with a talent like none other. And now that he was in boxers and one of Sam’s Stanford sweatshirts, curled up in the middle of the floor inside a cocoon of comforters with his fuzzy socks sticking out…Well, even Sam and Dean couldn’t be irritated with that.

Castiel shook his head at his brother. “You’re pitiful. You know that, don’t you?”

Gabriel snuffled miserably. “I was in a higher echelon,” he wailed. “I fell from farther, and so I hit harder!”

“That’s ridiculous. You were already on land when you fell.”

“That’s not the point! I’m Gabriel!”

By now, his voice was so nasal that Castiel wondered how the man could breathe at all. “You were Gabriel,” he sighed, seating himself on the blanket nest beside his brother. “You’re just Gabe now, and you would do better to stop thinking about what you were, and start thinking about what you are. You won’t forget what you were just because you start again. You’ve been Loki. You’ve been Ananzi. And you’ve been Gabriel. It’s time to figure out who Gabe is.”

“Gabe is a wuss,” he snapped, his sulky voice muffled by the blankets around his head.

“Gabriel, when I lost my grace, I went through what you are going through. But I did it while being hunted by our kind.”

A whiskey brown eye gazed out of the blankets at him. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m saying you’re going to be fine.”

“Cas? Why are you being good to me? I haven’t always been good to you.”

“You haven’t ever been good to me.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Okay. Details.”

Castiel smiled softly. “You did save my friends once.”

“Killed them some too.”

“Yes you did. We’ve all done things we might not have done if we knew then what we know now. But part of being human is learning that if you hold onto grudges, they rot inside your vessel. The parts of you that used to be filled with grace will be filled with venom instead, and no amount of sneezing will get it out.”

Gabriel shrunk a little at that. “Sorry about your coat, Cassie.”

In a million years, it had never occurred to Castiel that he would ever be apologized to by an archangel. Certainly not about mucus on his trench coat. “It doesn’t matter, Gabriel. Sam says it will come off in the wash.”

“You could just-"

“I’m not going to use my grace while you’re still learning to get along without yours. Not actively use it, that is. It’s not as though I can just turn it off.”

A puffy pink Gabriel emerged from inside the comforters to stare at him. “You’re not going to…For me?”

“Humans sometimes attempt to show solidarity for friends going through hard times, as a means of empathizing. I have been where you are, and I had no one to do such a thing, nor did I deserve it at the time. But someone should be there for you, and I’m all you have. I and the Winchesters.”

***

Listening to Castiel, there came a tingling behind Gabriel’s eyes, and he waited for the explosion he had learned to expect, but instead, his eyes got watery even without the sneeze. He did not understand why. But Castiel smiled at him and took hold of his hand.

“Welcome to the club, Gabriel.”

Gabriel wanted to make a comment about having once belonged to a much better club, but right now he didn’t even believe that himself. This was the closest thing to true family he had ever known, and it felt right, like nothing ever had. So instead, he simply squeezed Castiel’s hand, because it seemed like the thing to do, and sniffled quietly.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feed the author with comments! Cookies are good too. :)


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